


His becoming

by Jonah_Smith_907



Series: Some fluff shit, some rough shit. [11]
Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Emotional Hurt, Heavy Angst, Hurt Frank Castle, also there's blood, and probably depressed, graphically mentioned, idk - Freeform, it's basically Frank being angst af, like so goddamn heavy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 14:26:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17624120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jonah_Smith_907/pseuds/Jonah_Smith_907
Summary: Frank Castle is sitting in front of the carousel again. It's dark now, although he's sure it was lighter when he sat down. He finds himself here often as of lately. Sometimes he doesn't even notice it, but in the end he always ends up back here, alone, watching the happiness of other families, happy ones and the broken ones who just take a break from their misery.He misses them. He doesn't deny it. He tried it, of course, but it didn't take long until all the grief came back with the force of a hurricane. It was a bad day, that day. He hurt that one man at the bar. He doesn't remember why. He doesn't even remember why he can't remember it. Maybe it was the alcohol or the lack of sleep or maybe his brain took a break from real life and decided to switch itself off for a few hours. He is banned from that bar now.Suddenly he registers an elder man approaching him. 'Probably the owner,' he thinks. 'Maybe he wants trouble,' he thinks. 'I'll kill him if he does,' he thinks. 'No problem.'The beginning is set somewhere between the first episode of The Punisher season1 and the first episode of Daredevil season 2





	His becoming

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to keep the timelines consistent so far, but I'd already written three pages before I had that idea, so like ... sorry if things are terribly out of place, although I think it's not that bad.

Frank Castle is sitting in front of the carousel again. It's dark now, although he's sure it was lighter when he sat down. He finds himself here often as of lately. Sometimes he doesn't even notice it, but in the end he always ends up back here, alone, watching the happiness of other families, happy ones and the broken ones who just take a break from their misery. 

He misses them. He doesn't deny it. He tried it, of course, but it didn't take long until all the grief came back with the force of a hurricane. It was a bad day, that day. He hurt that one man at the bar. He doesn't remember why. He doesn't even remember why he can't remember it. Maybe it was the alcohol or the lack of sleep or maybe his brain took a break from real life and decided to switch itself off for a few hours. He is banned from that bar now.

Suddenly he registers an elder man approaching him. 'Probably the owner,' he thinks. 'Maybe he wants trouble,' he thinks. 'I'll kill him if he does,' he thinks. 'No problem.' 

He doesn't move when the man gets closer with a weary look on his face. 'Maybe he thinks that I want trouble,' he thinks. 'He can go fuck himself if he thinks he can interrupt me.' Interrupt his trip down memory lane. The kind that hurts him in so many ways and leaves him so cold and alone. 

“I've seen you here a lot lately,” senior says.

Frank stares at him with empty eyes, his face a blank mask. He doesn't encourage further conversation. He wants to be left alone, so that he can keep the memories for some time longer, until the nightmares take over.

“I wanna be frank here, buddy,” the old man states. He looks nervous. He knows a soldier when he sees one, even if said soldier has long hair and a beard. “I don't want any creeps lurking 'round every evenin', staring at other people's kids. You know how that looks, right?”

Frank nods once and lowers his head as he takes a deep breath. He finds speaking oddly difficult these days. Exhausting. So he just … doesn't. Usually. “I used to come here with my daughter and son,” he quietly explains, voice rough as ever. Rough and broken, he knows it, but he doesn't think about it much. “And with my wife.”

“But not anymore?”

“No.” Frank lifts his head again. His eyes aren't empty any more. Now they are filled with sadness and pain and this endless, echoing loneliness that makes his whole body go numb and at the same time it burns a hole into his heart. “No, not anymore.”

Perhaps senior doesn't like the look on Franks face, or he just wants to go home and not get beaten up by this stranger. He gives a vague nod and turns to leave. He looks back once, only to see Frank still sitting there, shoulders hunched over, head lowered, hands fidgeting with something in his lap. He looks like a beaten dog that lost its puppies. He doesn't want to see the look in those dark eyes again. It scared him. Never has he seen eyes like those; dark and empty, yet full of grief. 

 

Frank leaves the carousel late today. He wanders through the streets of Hell's Kitchen for some time, not really caring about where he's going. He doesn't have anywhere to go anyway. He can't go home; too many memories. He doesn't want to be in this empty house with all the pictures and books and smells. All those familiarities that remind him of the old days. Better ones. 

So he stays outside, walks through the cool night and past all those warm looking restaurants, bars and cafes. He doesn't seek the company of other people. Not tonight; possibly never. Maybe he'll just leave town, go far away, somewhere where nobody knows him and he'll make friends and start over. Move on. 

But he knows that it won't work. He can't just forget what happened. Too vivid are the memories of _that day_. Far too vivid. He doesn't like them; doesn't like when they invade his dreams, waking him up from his sleep. 

No, he can't forget. And he can't forgive. He has to find whoever is responsible, whoever decided to kill all those people. To kill his family. 

He has to find them. There is no other way. 

 

In the end he ends up back in the flat he got. It's small and ugly, but cheap and the landlord doesn't ask any questions. No that he'd get any answers, but it's easier this way. 

Frank sits on the chair in the corner for some time, staring at the wall. He considers playing a few notes on the guitar he's still got, but he's scared of the thoughts that will accompany that. The ones he has now are bad enough. No need for more. 

Maybe he should go to sleep. He hasn't slept enough lately. Well. He hasn't really since the war, but at least he had his wife to help him. She'd help whenever he woke up from a nightmare; she'd help him go back to sleep. 

Now he's alone and he doesn't like going to bed. He lays awake for too long, wakes up too early, sweating and trembling from the pictures he sees in his dreams. 

Sometimes he wishes he could just forget. Forget or die; either way would be fine. But then he wants to bang his head against a wall for even thinking about it. He can't just abandon his family like that. They were viciously killed and it's his responsibility to find out by who. He nods to himself.

He swears vengeance for his loved one's deaths, swears it on the grave of his daughter.

He'll find them, one day. Just not now.

 

He works on a construction site. He works there all day, ignores the jabs his co-workers give him and attacks the wall until his hands bleed. He takes his breaks on the roof, away from all of them. Until he meets the kid. And he sees him slipping away into criminality. So he helps him out a bit. Kills a few men. 

And then he goes home. Continues with the uneventful boringness that presents itself as his current life. 

 

Eventually things start to pile up. An odd phone-call started it. Now Frank is shaving his hair short and his beard off. 

He knows now that he has to do something. He does his research. Finds out about Lieberman. Even visits his family in the hopes of luring him out. It doesn't work, so Frank goes and tortures a guy. It fills him with grim satisfaction that he's still got it. 

That's where he starts. 

That's where The Punisher starts.

 

He needs weapons. He knows he won't be merciful. They don't deserve mercy. Don't even deserve a warning before he strikes them down. Of course he'll have to interrogate a few of them. He'll keep them alive long enough for them to answer. It won't be pretty; there'll be much blood. 

So much blood. As much blood as his children had to lose before they died and more. They will feel the pain Frank has to feel, will wish they were dead, just like him, only so the pain will stop. 

He doesn't sleep this night. He stares out of the window for some time, lets the darkness be the screen of his nightmares. It's interesting, if he thinks about it. Now he doesn't even have to sleep anymore for the nightmares to haunt him. 

The moon stands high in the quiet sky when Frank returns to the present and sits down in front of his computer. He starts with the day he died. 

'Right,' he thinks. 'I was dead.' That thought doesn't trigger any emotion in him. He wouldn't have cared if he'd stayed dead, but now that he's still alive, his enemies will wish he was buried six feet deep in the cold earth. Even though he doesn't even know yet who his enemies are, he knows, once he finds them, they will rot in hell forever. If there's even enough left of them to make the journey. 

After four hours of utterly fruitless research, he turns off the computer with an annoyed huff. Perhaps it's smarter, or rather easier, to start with getting some equipment and guns. Guns that can make organs explode and rip off limbs, guns that can tear body's apart and leave them in a bloody heap of splintered bones and broken skulls. 

He kills the man from whom he buys the electronics he needs. He doesn't feel guilty about it. That disgusting pig offered him child-pornography and that is something Frank can't tolerate. Not if it involves kids, he can't. So Frank bashes the guys head in with a baseball-bat. And when he sees that look in his eyes, that fear and anger, the way the anger disappears and leaves nothing behind but those cold, dead eyes, that's when Frank feels, for the first time since his wife died. For the first time since his children died, there's a spark inside of him that makes him realize how numb he's been in those past months. 

Now he knows how to get rid of the fog clogging his brain. 

Now he knows how he can make the nightmares go away. 

He will become The Punisher. And if he dies, well, then that's that. 

 

When Frank kills the Irish, he's trying to experience something other than … joy. The joy of finally doing something. But he can't help it when he sees the blood splattering and the bodies dropping lifelessly to the floor, knowing he's lastly doing something to avenge his family.

He's got nothing left to lose. He has already lost the most important thing to be found in a human being: love. The kind that stops people from killing in cold blood. The one that ensures that people don't turn into monsters. But Frank's love died with his family. He tilts his head to the side and exhales softly.

If this is who he's going to be from now on, then so be it. 

 

Not long after, Frank encounters Daredevil for the first time. In the beginning he finds the guy annoying at best. Always sniffing around in things he doesn't understand. Things that are too big for him. So Frank tries to get the guy away from him – by shooting him. He didn't exactly want to shoot him in the head, but now that it's too late to change it, he fights the all too familiar guilt by shooting other guys. 

So the next time he faces the man in red, he suddenly feels something very close to relief. Daredevil is only trying to help, after all. He may be annoying and, as Frank finds out on a rooftop, also righteous as fuck, but he's still just trying to protect his city. 

His city. Not Frank's. He hasn't even thought about that yet, but now that he does, he must admit that it's true. Hell's Kitchen is not his city any more. Neither is the whole of New York. The only reason he's still here, is because he has unfinished business he has to deal with. 

Hell's Kitchen is Daredevil's territory and the Punisher is okay with that.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, leave a comment.


End file.
